Judge Prolongs Operation, Massive DNSChanger Infections to Continue

The last date for a short-term solution by FBI for a malicious activity being conducted online has been prolonged, according to one federal judge of U.S. federation; however, innumerable PCs and routers having DNSChanger will continue to be vulnerable to perilous PC-viruses, published DarkReading on March 6, 2012.

Specifically, request has been granted legally to let an extension of a 4-month period in connection with the short-lived DNS servers' operation so computers contaminated with malware may remain online till the time the virus clean-sweeps them.

Notably, the manner in which DNSChanger propagated little differed when compared with other malware's propagation. In fact, it didn't take much time for malware-creators to perceive that if they managed in controlling the DNS servers of end-users, it could be just as easy to interfere and control their online-activities. For that, however, Internet-advertisements had to be manipulated via click-jacking, while there was little knowledge with the victims regarding their computers getting hijacked alternatively of malicious software, which made their computers prone to more viruses.

Last November, when the U.S. Department-of-Justice orchestrated one prominent takedown, the target was DNSChanger that during the time of its maximum activity infected over 4m Macs and Windows PCs globally.

The malicious program compromised end-users' clicks after resetting the DNS (domain name system) configurations of their PCs so the URL-queries could be transmitted onto the servers of the cyber-crooks themselves, which then drove the victims onto maliciously-crafted websites mimicking the original sites.

Importantly, technology and services vendor Internet Identity (IID) states that incase a company employee causes its computer to be infected with DNSChanger, the result can be 'theft of its proprietary information.' This happens as the malware deactivates routine software updates and anti-virus programs, putting the victim at risk of other viruses and thereby giving the criminals access to the company's data, e-mails and more through the affected PC.

Meanwhile as per FBI, whilst government organizations and enterprises turned susceptible to Trojan, individual consumers too were impacted that netted cyber-criminals $14m.

Fortunately an IID research revealed an enormous decline in prominent U.S. federal organizations and Fortune 500 enterprises, which had been contaminated with the DNSChanger.